Visible Impacts

That humans lived, worked, and moved within aquatic spaces is clear, but what impact did they – or could they – have? The history of marine environments in the early modern era is caught between two opposite problems. The ocean was a vast and complex system which could not be controlled, much less understood, by human communities. At the same time, there are specific cases where sources show coastal populations impacting marine environments. Historians have struggled to make sense of the tension between these two poles, and to assess the human role in shaping marine environments before the modern period. This chapter explores the evidence for localized impacts, from over-fishing oyster beds to exterminating whale communities to polluting, including the impacts of shipwrecks. It shows that across the early modern era, some forms of maritime labor or coastal living did change and even degrade marine ecologies. This chapter also explores the rising potential for humans to un-make marine environments, including through coastal infrastructure and through land reclamation projects in the Pearl River Delta and the Netherlands.